Here are Some Thoughts to Bring Up with Your Elected Officials about Pavement Preservation for future Surface Transportation Reauthorization

When contacting your elected officials, either in person with the legislator or his or her assistant, or by first class mail or e-mail, always start by explaining your personal connection to them.

For example, do you live or work in their state or district? If you have a facility in the state or district explain how many people work there and explain how the lack of a long term highway reauthorization bill affects them.

Then it will be time to talk about the issue!

FP2 and its allies are working to retain pavement preservation provisions in the six-year reauthorization bills now before Congress.

•Pavement preservation became eligible for funding in the MAP-21 and now FAST Act surface transportation legislation; now it’s essential that it’s retained in future surface transportation reauthorization. That’s because pavement preservation practice extends pavement life, avoiding high future costs of reconstruction or rehabilitation through the expenditure of less money at critical points in a pavement life.

• Pavement preservation is an important tool used to extend public agency resources to increase the useful life of roads at a significant cost savings over the life of the road. Research shows spending $1 to preserve a road in good condition precludes spending $6 to $10 to reconstruct it later, after it’s gone too far to maintain.

• By preserving and extending the life of pavement, thus deferring the need for costly rehabilitation and reconstruction projects, federal highway dollars will go farther, less roadwork disruption will be created for the motorist, and the environment will benefit by decreased emissions from traffic jams, construction equipment and other environmental impacts.

• Extending limited federal, state and local dollars available for road infrastructure via pavement preservation is particularly important when budgets are limited.

• Short-term funding bills result in uncertainty. Public agencies need a multi-year reauthorization so they can plan multi-year projects. Otherwise they lurch from extension to extension, unable to make long-term decisions. This inability to plan is costly to taxpayers, and is not at all cost-effective for maintaining infrastructure.

• Asset management plans are maintained by state and local transportation agencies, which use them to make preservation decisions within a multi-year time frame. Lack of a multi-year reauthorization forces agencies to focus on the more short-sighted “worst first” approach, in which maintenance cash is spent fixing problems rather than planning to prevent future problems.

• In addition to its work “inside the Beltway” FP2 is very involved in supporting regional pavement preservation partnerships and councils, and the National Center for Pavement Preservation, all of which help promote wise use of limited dollars by preserving roads.

• FP2 also supports practical field research and development, such as collaborative research by Alabama’s National Center for Asphalt Technology, and Minnesota’s MnRoad test tracks, which are pioneering research in pavement preservation best practices in different climates, while reducing duplication of state efforts.

Please Reach Out to Your Elected Officials!

Please reach out to your representative and two senators to urge them to support reauthorization of a long-term highway spending bill this year, and which includes adequate funding for pavement preservation and research.

An easy way to identify your representative and access their information is by clicking on http://www.house.gov/representatives/find. You simply type in your zip code and your representative’s name and phone number comes up. Senators may be found at http://www.senate.gov.

Your use of these themes will make your outreach easier, and ensure a consistent message from the pavement preservation community.

Bergkamp was elected president at FP2’s board meeting in January 2019 and will serve a two-year term. He’s president and CEO of Bergkamp Inc., Salina, Kan., and succeeds Andrew Crow, Vice President, Pavement Technologies, Ingevity.

“I look forward to serving this organization and its contributors, and working with the surface transportation community to advance pavement preservation,” Bergkamp said. “We bring a host of solutions to the infrastructure problems the country faces, and together we can help the road network live up to its potential of safety, smoothness and reliability. I encourage stakeholders in the pavement preservation community to please join us in this effort, both financially, and through personal efforts.

The Sorenson Award is presented by FP2 Inc. to recognize superior pavement preservation practice, usually to a city, township, county or state agency. The deadline for entries for the year 2019 is July 1, 2020.

At its meeting in March 2018, the Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists (AAPT) held a special, three-hour symposium on Pavement Preservation. The symposium featured five speakers with panel discussion, and Andrew Braham, Ph.D., University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, and Phil Blankenship, Blankenship Asphalt Tech and Training, PLLC, presided. Questions can be submitted by Tweeting to: #AAPT2018

The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) is the winner of the 2016 James B. Sorenson Award for Excellence in Pavement Preservation.

The Sorenson Award is presented each year by FP2 Inc. to recognize superior pavement preservation practice, usually to a city, county or state agency. It was presented this year to Patrick Bierl, design engineer, and Eric Biehl, P.E., asphalt materials engineer, Ohio DOT at an awards luncheon Oct. 13 during the 2016 National Pavement Preservation Conference in Nashville.